


A Verse, Chorus, And Such

by luninosity



Series: Like Sugar (Spell It Out) [4]
Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Sex, Arranged Marriage, Consensual Kink, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Helpful Sibling Advice, Kneeling, Light Bondage, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Relationship Negotiation, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 03:04:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2492132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian learns some things. Chris thinks about art. Siblings are sometimes helpful. And fairy-tales matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Verse, Chorus, And Such

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Morlendur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morlendur/gifts).



> Part four! Which honestly surprised me in a lot of different ways, as I kept expecting it to be something, and then it wanted to be something else...
> 
> Title from Tegan and Sara's "Underwater," this time.
> 
> **Tiny warnings** for brief mention of fairy-tale violence when Sebastian tells Chris a story.

_Chris_  
  
“I think I’d like to invite Scott over,” Sebastian says, face tucked into Chris’s neck, breathing warm sleepy exhales over Chris’s skin.  
  
Chris raises an eyebrow, fingers stroking his submissive’s back, lazily counting vertebrae. The night enfolds them in grey-violet arms and the continuous sounds of New York City, the city that never sleeps, beyond the window. The sheets on Sebastian’s bed—their bed—nestle up against his skin in midnight-cotton snowdrifts, and Sebastian’s body’s pliant and drowsy and content along his side. “You aren’t seriously bringing up my brother _now,_ are you?”  
  
Sebastian laughs, amusement that sinks all the way through Chris’s bones and stays there, suffusing his body with pleasant heat. He loves that feeling. Loves the fact that Sebastian feels safe enough these days to laugh, to take the comment as the joke it is, rather than panicking over the possibility of having displeased a touchy Dominant.  
  
Chris adds, for good measure, “Because I love Scott and all, but I’d kinda like to not have to think about him while we’re naked,” and Sebastian laughs some more, bright and beautiful. Shooting stars in the autumn sky. “Perhaps not the best timing, no…on the other hand, it’s somewhat relevant. And potentially a good idea.”  
  
“Okay, _now_ I’m worried.”  
  
“Oh…sorry, Chris.” But the apology’s delivered with a kiss, certain and sweet; Chris licks his lips after. Sebastian goes on, “I only meant relevant in the sense of what we just did…oh, no, _not_ like that, ah…” A few muttered words, likely profanities, in Romanian and what’s conceivably German, and then: “You asked me to talk to him. About—about the things I don’t know. Orientation classes. Remember?”  
  
“Oh.” He’d honestly forgotten he’d made the suggestion. He winces a bit, remembering, weeks later. So fucking patronizing. As if Sebastian’s not incredible. Spectacular. Unparalleled. “You don’t have to. You’re perfect. I’m a moron. Have you—how long’ve you been thinking about this?”  
  
“You’re not a moron.” Sebastian taps fingers over his chest, musician’s hands sketching out something that might be “Für Elise” just below the ink-lines of his collarbone. Sebastian likes touching the tattoos, Chris has realized, exploring and entranced by the tangible memories. Sebastian likes the quote the most, and has spent timeless decadent minutes tracing letters with fingers and tongue, licking and mouthing and sucking new marks into the thin skin over bone.  
  
Sebastian, despite this fascinated passion, rarely touches the name over Chris’s ribs. The few times he has, he’s spent longer there, simply looking at his hand and that memorial, eyes opaque. Chris doesn’t know how to ask what he’s thinking. Whether the lingering’s a form of penance for not being the person he thinks Chris wanted and still wants, or a determination to prove himself, and the question then would be to whom, and Chris wants to put both arms around him in those moments and never let go.  
  
“And…a while. A few days.”  
  
Oh. He’d asked a question. His submissive’s answering. Right.  
  
“You weren’t wrong,” Sebastian says. “I know how much I don’t know. And I know you’ll say you don’t care, sir—”  
  
“I don’t!”  
  
“—but other people will. And when we’re out in public…industry parties, your exhibit openings, that arts benefit we’re invited to next month…they’ll be looking. The people.”  
  
Chris sighs. Loudly. Someone’s car alarm squawks from the street below. The music of the night, messy and alive.  
  
“You know I’m right.”  
  
“Yeah, and you know I hate it. Not you being right. And I don’t hate it exactly. I mean—I don’t even fuckin’ know what I mean. Never mind.”  
  
“You mean,” Sebastian murmurs, sitting up enough to look him in the eye, propped on one elbow with the shadows and shapes of nighttime tangling in long eyelashes, “that you enjoy me being yours, you want me to be yours in public, you want everyone to know I belong to you—and you hate the fact that it’s not a choice. That we need to carry it off, and convincingly so. And you’re afraid I’ll loathe every minute, and possibly—I’m not sure about this one—that I won’t know how to be convincing enough and there’ll be questions about insufficient control. And you feel guilty that part of you might enjoy it anyway. Have I got that mostly right?”  
  
Chris stares at him for a second, wonders when his husband became the best mind-reader in the whole damn universe, and manages, “Mostly, yeah…I’m not too worried about you, you can just smile at everyone and they’ll do whatever you say…I never want you to feel like a _thing_ , y’know? You’re not my property.”  
  
“Technically I more or less am.” Sebastian shrugs, one-shouldered and eloquent and not as bitter as Chris might’ve guessed. “You bought me. And that is a leash in that box, the one the collar came in, that you’ve been pretending you’re not hiding from me. Did it ever occur to you that I might also enjoy being yours?”  
  
“In public?”  
  
“Well—we’ve handled casual dates. Grocery shopping. I expect formal occasions are somewhat different, but… _nu ştiu._ I don’t know. I won’t know until we try. And I need to know what’s expected of me before I can decide whether or not to hate it.”  
  
Chris, turning over potential answers like live grenades, feels his heart tremble. One wrong syllable, one slip-up, and the world’ll explode. Moonlight and starshine shredded like blood on the floor.  
  
He walks fingertips up Sebastian’s back, to the nape of that neck, playing with soft short strands of hair. Grounding, that connection. More so when his husband smiles, private flare of welcome in the pale blue of those eyes.  
  
He says, “So you want to invite Scott over…”  
  
Sebastian says, utterly practical and matter-of-fact, “He can also help us pack.”  
  
Chris, startled, has to laugh. They do move in less than three weeks. Out of Sebastian’s apartment; into the place they’ve chosen together. “I fuckin’ love the way you think.”  
  
And then he panics. Oh God, oh _God,_ he’s _said_ it, not quite the _I love you_ but close, so close, too close, and it’s too soon, Sebastian barely knows him, they’re only just inching past the rough-edged rocky shoals of that first fight and every terrible word Chris threw at him, Sebastian who never wanted to marry anyone and who understands Chris like no one ever—  
  
Sebastian’s next inhale’s quick and surprised, but not dismayed. And the fingertips stop lying astonishedly on Chris’s chest and outline a heart in wordless reply. “I…think I may also…love that. I mean, not about myself, about you.”  
  
Chris whispers, “Oh,” aware he’s grinning foolishly, ear to ear, cheeks aching with unlooked-for joy in the velvet night. It’s not those words, not yet, of course not. But it’s right next door. A very friendly neighbor. Cups of sugar borrowed and lent.  
  
“Oh,” Sebastian echoes, smiling too, and Chris kisses him, puts a hand into his hair and rolls him over onto his back amid the wrinkled sheets and keeps kissing him everyplace. Sebastian laughs, and Chris loses himself in the sound like the intoxication of sweet wine, giddy with it, drunk on the way his husband’s legs wrap around his waist and the heat of desire-flushed skin beneath his hands.

In the morning he wakes up with his cock nestled between the curves of Sebastian’s ass and his face buried in dark hair. Strands of it stick to his mouth, and he’s got arms and legs draped around his submissive in unconscious and extremely ungainly possession. They’re close enough in height that it’s in fact a bit awkward for Sebastian to be the little spoon, not terribly easy for Chris to curl around him and envelope him in protective instincts; but Sebastian’s got slimmer shoulders and an overall leaner build, more a baby gazelle than a fighting stag, or so Chris’s half-awake Bambi-influenced metaphors decide.  
  
Sebastian yawns and stretches, waking up too, and Chris’s entire body lights up with desire and love and an odd tenderness, a kind of helpless flutter-winged adoration that spins his heart around and makes him want to laugh and smile and sigh.  
  
He kisses the back of Sebastian’s neck. Sebastian murmurs half-awake inquisitive-but-willing agreement, sleepy and truthful. Wanting him.  
  
Chris eases him to his stomach, trails kisses down his spine, keeps hands firm on his hips. At the first touch of Chris’s tongue, licking into the crease between pert curves, Sebastian gasps. Stiffens under him.  
  
Chris pauses. Rubs thumbs over hipbones, reassurance that he’s heard the tension and is listening. “Okay?”  
  
“I…” One winter-blue eye peeks at him through morning-messy hair and bedsheets. “I’ve never…no one ever…are you sure you want to— _there?_ ”  
  
“I’d like to, yeah.” He keeps his voice low. Soothing. Sebastian sounds more amazed than distressed, but still. “No one ever did that for you?”  
  
“Most of my experience has not involved kissing,” Sebastian retorts, “much less there. I don’t know how to—what to—you can, of course, sir, anything you—but—should I shower, or—”  
  
“We showered last night,” Chris points out, hands busy kneading small circles into Sebastian’s ass and hips and lower back, careful gentling motion. “And no, not anything I want, anything _we_ want, and tell me honestly whether you like the way this feels, okay?”  
  
“Yes…” But there’s a hint of hesitation in the concurrence. Chris leans down to drop a kiss between taut shoulder-blades. “Talk to me. If you’re not comfortable, I’ll stop.”  
  
“Tie me up,” Sebastian says after a second. “Wrists, at least. Something…”  
  
“Got it.” Something that’ll be an anchor. Tangible restraint: removal of responsibility to an extent, Chris not asking him to continually enact the choice to surrender and stay still.  
  
It’s always Sebastian’s choice, of course. If Sebastian asks, if those sunrise-over-oceanscape eyes flinch or grow nervous, if that voice says even as much as “yellow,” they’ll stop.  
  
Sebastian’s asking right now to abdicate a certain amount of that choice. To let Chris tie him up and make the decisions about how to use his body. But that’s willing surrender. And Chris can only—humbly, in awe—equally willingly accept.  
  
They don’t have too many toys at hand—Sebastian’s previously been very cautious about not giving his inclinations away, and Chris’s meager practice collection’s back home in Boston—but they have figured out over the past weeks that scarves work excellently for this purpose. Sebastian’s got a lot of scarves. Chris has bought even more.  
  
He bounces off the bed. Grabs the closest one from its dresser-top coil. It’s black and silky and slides through his fingers like water. When he loops it around offered wrists, Sebastian sighs, tension leaving his body in one slow exhale.  
  
“Look at me,” Chris asks, very softly. Sebastian turns his head as much as he can, being face-down. There’s a smile at the corner of his mouth, quiet unvoiced happiness. There’s matching fearless sweetness in his gaze.  
  
Chris clears his throat, swallows, tries again for words, faced with that yielding bravery. “Okay. You’re okay, right? Not too tight?”  
  
Hands tug experimentally at bonds. Not much give in that knot. “Good, sir.” Even his voice sounds dreamy. Waves peacefully brushing along a shining shore.  
  
“That does work for you, doesn’t it?” He strokes a hand over Sebastian’s back. “Being tied up, being held down…you like my restraints on you. Keeping you where I want you. So I can play with you…”  
  
“Please,” Sebastian breathes. “Please. _Te rog._ ”  
  
“Remind me?”  
  
Sebastian nearly laughs. Doesn’t quite. The joy’s present regardless. “Please. What I said, I mean.”  
  
“I like it. Hearing you ask nicely. Hearing you beg.” He bends down; the next words feather along the shell-line of Sebastian’s ear. “You like it too. Begging me.”  
  
Sebastian gasps. Trembles, hips shifting, rocking into the bed. Rubbing his cock, rubbing himself, against the sheets.  
  
Chris permits him to torment himself for a minute more. Then says, “Don’t move.”  
  
Sebastian freezes instantly, visible eye caught between guilt and shameless need.  
  
“You wanted this,” Chris reminds him. “You wanted to try.”  
  
“I do…”  
  
“Then don’t move.” He bends down. Leaves a kiss at the base of his submissive’s spine, the dip before plush curves. Sebastian’s made of long legs and long arms and lean muscle, awkwardly graceful as a half-grown colt, and right now as vulnerable. Given over to him.  
  
He nuzzles care into pale gold skin. Loves every scrape of beard and rasp of mouth, leaving pinkness, earning moans of capitulation. Sebastian adores sensation, needs physical anchors; Chris’s heart flips over at the thought of giving it to him. Sebastian’s told him that this feels new. Never this way, never this want, with anyone else; Chris’s heart wants to burst into song.  
  
Sebastian, lying pliant and lovely in rumpled sheets and the autumn-nip of morning, relaxes even more under his ministrations and the comfort of restraints. Serene and wholly his. Chris could do anything to him, for him, with him, right now.  
  
He kisses Sebastian’s right hip. Marvels at the soft sigh he gets in response. Sebastian’s further under than he’d thought, and the emotion swells inside his chest: arousal, definitely. A certain amount of pride: his touch, his care, permits his sub to let go so profoundly. Amazement: Sebastian’s so responsive, so eager to be his, to belong and be cherished. And Chris is so damn lucky, and just a little jealous of everyone who’s touched him before, and not at all jealous because no one else has ever, no one else will ever, see Sebastian like this.  
  
He murmurs, “I did ask you to beg me,” and Sebastian obligingly whispers, “Please,” before he’s even finished speaking. Chris grins, even though his husband can’t see, and says, “So good, aren’t you? For me?” and hears the hushed whimper of reply.  
  
He takes his time, pressing kisses over slim hips, muscular thighs, that crease where a long leg meets the pert shape of Sebastian’s backside. He’s careful to not push, kneading Sebastian’s ass with soothing fingertips, caressing him with drawn-out slowness, until his submissive’s shivering and moaning his name amid broken Romanian phrases, begging for more, faster, harder, _something_ , please…  
  
Still deliberate, still gradual, but Sebastian’ll welcome any touch at this point, particularly to that rosebud furl of muscle that’s begging to be tasted. Chris kisses the top of the crease between buttocks, first; Sebastian doesn’t flinch or seem nervous, only moans and pushes back. So Chris opens him up further. And licks.  
  
Sebastian moans again, sound seemingly involuntary, drawn from someplace deep inside.  
  
Chris grins and gets back to tasting him, tongue exploring, nudging in deeper, lapping at that hole. Sebastian’s body and his own beard grow wet, messy, slick; Sebastian’s whining and sobbing and not even making words, shuddering as Chris spreads him out and devours him, adrift in this brand-new sensation.  
  
They’re absolutely going to have to do this more. Chris has always considered it one of many techniques in the repertoire, not a necessity; but Sebastian tastes like heat and dark secret musk and a hint of soap, and comes apart around him with addictive abandon.  
  
He doesn’t try to push the moment too far. Sebastian had been embarrassed, earlier; he’s loving the strokes of tongue now, but Chris knows about subspace and endorphins and glimmering heights, not from personal experience but from having seen it up close. He knows this isn’t a rational space. Sebastian did say yes and wanted to try, and Chris isn’t going to let him regret it.  
  
He pulls back, leaving his submissive opened up and wet and ready; that hole clenches, shining with the traces of Chris’s mouth. Sebastian’s mumbling words Chris doesn’t know, other languages, though he catches his name and that Romanian please. Incantations, magic spells, and Chris is enchanted.  
  
He tugs at Sebastian’s hips, lifting, rearranging, tilting upward. His submissive moves readily, fluidly, molten in his hands. Chris tells him gently, “I’d like to come inside you,” and he’s not exactly asking for permission but he’s relieved when he gets the nod.  
  
“You can,” he says, “when I do, or when you need to,” and Sebastian makes another soft wordless sound, hands twisting blindly in the scarf, not escape but assent.  
  
He doesn’t pause for lube. He could—there’s some on the table—but that’d mean stepping away from Sebastian. Not now. No breaks in touching. Skin against skin.  
  
The first push must burn a little—there’s a quiet gasp—but that hole’s stretched and thoroughly drenched from his mouth already, and it doesn’t take much for Chris to slide in. He’d stop if Sebastian asked, of course, or if those muscles trembled with anything closer to pain than ecstasy; but Sebastian doesn’t ask, so Chris pulls back and thrusts again, and Sebastian moans, lost in feeling, body yielding around him like a flower.  
  
So good, _so_ good, that sound and the tight hot feel of muscles around him and the sheen of sweat visible in the arch of Sebastian’s back; Chris knows he’s going to come, feels the tightening in his balls and his body and his spine, and he slams home harder, knowing he’s hit the right spot when Sebastian screams, an honest-to-God cry of pleasure, and clamps down around him, coming on the pounding of Chris’s cock inside his body, orgasm spurting freely into the air, splashing sheets below.  
  
Chris, pushed over the edge by that marvelous comprehension, follows. Scorching bliss. Thundering through his bones. Rapture.  
  
Sebastian’s shivering in the aftermath, not quite having resurfaced, lips parted and eyes huge; Chris holds him, unbinds his wrists and replaces scarf with one big hand, grounds him with words and touch. Gradually the shivering eases, and his submissive breathes out, blinking, focusing.  
  
“Hey.” Chris purposefully keeps his voice light, though what he wants to say is: I love you, I love you, are you okay, I love you. “Better?”  
  
One corner of Sebastian’s mouth lifts: a smile. And a nod.  
  
“Not talking yet?”  
  
This gets a briefly reflective pause, then a headshake, then a wriggle even closer, skin pressed against skin. “Okay,” Chris says, ignoring the fact that his own hip’s in the wet spot, “okay,” and rubs his back. “Warm enough? Want a blanket? Water?”  
  
Sebastian blinks a second time, smile flickering like sunshine. Nods, then shakes his head, then tangles their legs together.  
  
“Okay,” Chris says once more, and holds him, only holds him, and wants to stay there holding him forever.  
  
The morning’s fall-crisp and brittle, but not unkind. New York in autumn, merry breezes and cozy sweaters and leaves on the ground in Central Park, russet and gilt and auburn. Sebastian’s sheets’re sticky and deep blue and safe. Sebastian’s body’s warm and lax and undistressed beside him. Chris closes his eyes, not sleeping—he can’t, he has to stay awake, what if his sub needs him—but simply being, for a while.  
  
He wakes up to an amused expression in cool blue eyes, regarding him from inches away. Chris says, only somewhat reproachfully, “I wasn’t asleep,” and Sebastian grins. “Not at all, sir. Obviously.”  
  
“I wasn’t. Just comfortable. Were you watching me? Did I drool on your hair? And are you okay?” Sebastian’s skin feels a bit too chilly, no longer flushed with heat. “How long was I…not asleep?”  
  
“Not long.” Sebastian stretches a leg, tucks it up again, toes sneaking beneath Chris’s ankle. “Still early. And no, I don’t believe you managed to drool. Is that a possibility? Should I be prepared for showers?”  
  
“We probably ought to shower, I mean real shower…” Chris attempts to rub warmth into Sebastian’s hip. “ _Are_ you okay? You didn’t answer me.”  
  
“I am.” Sebastian blushes a little. “Sorry. I was only thinking. I feel…good. Anchored, if you like. Safe.”  
  
“Safe,” Chris echoes, “I thought that—I mean about you, being here, being in your bed—” and then they just end up beaming at each other in mutual flustered delight while the wind flirts giddily with the windowpane.  
  
“So,” Sebastian says eventually, through the happiness, “don’t you have a meeting? With that gallery owner?”  
  
“Oh fuck—” He twists around to stare at the clock. “Fuck, fuck, in two hours, yes—shower and—”  
  
“It’ll be fine, Chris.” Sebastian leans forward and kisses his nose. Chris blinks. “We’ll go shower, and then I’ll make you breakfast while you get dressed, sir? _I_ don’t have a meeting today.”  
  
“Um,” Chris says. “Yes?”  
  
“Yes, then.”  
  
“Wait. You’re cold.”  
  
“We’re about to shower…”  
  
“I know. Don’t get up yet. Get under the blankets.” Naked, he runs out to the kitchen, the refrigerator. Runs back to find his submissive obediently nestled into eiderdown fluff, eyes wide and even bluer than usual in the navy-stripe surroundings. “Here.”  
  
Sebastian looks at the chocolate truffle in Chris’s fingers, looks at Chris’s face. Then opens his mouth, while his eyes dance wickedly.  
  
Chris gulps back the _I love you_ for the fiftieth time, and feeds him by hand. Sebastian licks his fingers, pink tongue swirling over Chris’s skin in a wonderfully distracting manner.  
  
Chris swallows, orders his body to remember that he’s got about ninety minutes to get out the door, and walks them both into the tiny box-shaped shower. Sebastian tries to be helpful and wash Chris’s back; this proves decidedly _un_ helpful, as Chris can consequently only think of unbelievably filthy scenes. Himself bending his husband over on the spot. Himself licking Sebastian everywhere, including _there_ , where tight muscle’s stretched wide and lingeringly sticky with him. Himself shoving Sebastian to his knees and claiming that wide mouth, trapping those assiduous hands with his.  
  
Sebastian hops out of the shower and throws on sweatpants over no underwear at all. Chris, watching the trickle of shimmering water-drops along the planes of his back, stifles a groan.  
  
Sebastian turns. “Chris?”  
  
“…huh?”  
  
“Hmm,” Sebastian observes, and goes off to conjure scrambled eggs and bacon and toast out of the laughing morning air. Chris sighs, wills his erection—unsuccessfully—to subside, and squirms into a decent suit and tie.  
  
Sebastian, continuing to be shirtless, kisses him goodbye at the front door. The apartment’s cozy and smells of breakfast and feels like everyplace Chris wants to be. He says, “Put a shirt on, please, it’s cold, you were cold earlier and I—you know what I mean,” because that’s the only way he can get away with saying the depth of what he feels. “Do you need anything else? Um…aftercare, sort of? I’m sorry if I didn’t…”  
  
“I’m fine.” Sebastian lays fingers lightly over Chris’s cheek, apparently simply to touch. “You’re fantastic. And I feel thoroughly splendid.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Indeed. Rather energized, in fact. I could write a love song. Or begin packing up the books.”  
  
Chris, brain stuck on _love song,_ flails unromantically, “Stay warm? That’s kind of an order?”  
  
Sebastian grins as if this is the most heartfelt declaration of passion to ever grace the atmosphere. “Yes, Chris. You’re going to be late.”  
  
“I am not—oh fuck.”  
  
Sebastian makes an _I told you_ expression out of eyebrows and silence. Chris is rapidly coming to the conclusion that his submissive’s far more sarcastic, albeit playfully so, than anyone’s ever known. He loves that. He loves all of the pieces.  
  
“You’re right—” he concedes, and bolts. Sebastian’s smile follows him all the way to the gallery.  
  
It’s a good gallery, too. An exciting space, an inspiring space. He trails the owner around, trading comments about display stands and lighting. Chris works in a lot of media, liking to experiment; he’s got everything from traditional oils to hand-painted animation-cel sequences to incorporated found-object murals, and this particular series is all about stillness, peacefulness, serenity. In the slim white lines of birch trees, or the motion of a single falling snowflake. In ink on paper: he’d played with calligraphy, pondering tattoos, invoking Eastern influences. Balance and simplicity. Circles and swooping lines. The idealization, not of the ideal, but of the real.  
  
He likes this collection, mostly black and white with hints of natural earth-tones and leaves. It’ll fit well in the clean unfussy lines of the offered space. He’s also thinking that he wants to work in other color palettes next time. Waterfalls, perhaps. In motion, falling into rocks and foam, but oddly calming in the ceaseless tumble. Lots of blue.  
  
He wonders what Sebastian’s up to. There’d been no mention of any specific plans. He’d forgotten to ask.  
  
He smiles and follows the gallery owner back to the man’s office and they chat about dates and times for exhibit-opening, for a while.  
  
Sebastian’s probably busy. Probably composing, long legs sprawled out across his furniture the way they invariably end up when he forgets to rein himself in. Biting his lip, pen in hand. Notes on a script. Insight into character and heart and soul.  
  
Maybe Sebastian can work with him, someday. Music and art: a partnership. A melody for an exhibit, suffusing every one of the visitors’ senses.  
  
He wonders whether Sebastian likes water. Waves. The color blue. Too obvious? Maybe. Maybe flattering, though.  
  
The gallery owner delicately clears his throat. Chris jumps, fumbles himself up out of collaborative loving daydreams, and gets back to the matter of sorting out which pieces will tactfully be for sale and which won’t.  
  
Behind his back, the open beckoning room chuckles Sebastian’s name. Echoes of imagined tune. Sebastian still barely knows him. No reason to think that Sebastian could or would write anything with him, for him, for his art.  
  
Sebastian kept the sketch Chris sent him. By his computer. Where he spends time.  
  
Chris finds himself smiling, and the smile doesn’t seem inclined to go away.  
  
He comes home several hours later, feet tired but body crackling with excitement—he does love this process, seeing an exhibition come together, envisioning it complete, knowing other people’ll see it too. Nerve-wracking, yes, and he’ll be drowning in anxiety the night of—but right now he feels accomplished and giddy with anticipation, and he wants nothing more than to sweep his submissive off startled happy feet and into bed. Or not bed, if they can’t make it there. Maybe the sofa again. Or the floor. Sunset-hued sex before dinner, laughing.  
  
He eyes the floor, as the door to Sebastian’s—their—apartment swings wide. It’s a nice floor. Tempting.  
  
He takes a step in, and is greeted by the sound of his brother’s voice, which while not a bad voice is not at all the voice he wants to hear, and it’s saying, “—oh, and that’s not it, either, our babysitter was coming over, and so there’s us standing in the yard, and Chris just laughing his ass off because he knew she was on the way—”  
  
“He did not.” That faded Romanian-mythology accent’s scandalized and fascinated. Chris, eavesdropping shamelessly, can picture widened eyes. “You are telling me that he deliberately made you—wet your pants—in public, in the yard, in the full knowledge that you were about to get caught—”  
  
“Oh, that’s not the worst part,” Chris says, and they both spin away from the kitchen table and the decimated plateful of brownies with identical guilty expressions. The half-packed boxes of books on the living-room floor assume guilt in solidarity as well.  
  
“The worst part,” Chris elaborates, “was that we were way too old. Like, seriously too old. Like, I’m amazed you even listened to me.”  
  
“You got all Dominant at me!” Scott protests. “And you said you were gonna do it too. And also I’ve never listened to you ever again. And also, hi, I brought brownies.”  
  
Chris narrows eyes. Kicks boots off with twin thuds. “Are we talking special enhanced brownies, here?”  
  
Scott sticks on an innocent-martyr expression. “Would I do that to your adorable new husband?”  
  
“Yes!”  
  
“Hi,” Sebastian says, getting up and coming over to him, eyes huge and lovely but not as far as Chris can tell under any special-brownie-related influence. “How was your meeting, sir?”  
  
“Awesome, actually—”  
  
“Good,” Sebastian purrs, and wraps arms around Chris’s neck and kisses him in a way that requires some reconsideration of possible intoxication. Sebastian’s wonderfully responsive in private, of course, and this is that turned up to eleven, little lip-nibbles and teases and slips of tongue, but they’re not _in_ private, because Scott’s here—  
  
And is smirking in an impressively pumpkin-like manner. “Not bad. Nine out of ten.”  
  
“Nine?” Sebastian lifts an eyebrow. Kisses Chris once more, swifter and more playful. He’s wearing jeans now, Chris notices, and a striped blue-and-white soft-knit sweater that’s crying out for hands and petting. Casual and spectacular. Staying warm. “There are ratings?”  
  
“Well,” Scott drawls, “you could’ve done the whole traditional getting on your knees when he walked into the room, and waited for _him_ to kiss _you_ —”  
  
Chris, starting to get it, says, “Scott, you dickface,” which gets both submissives to gaze at him reproachfully. Undeterred, he grumbles, “You _have_ been giving him advice, haven’t you?”  
  
Scott puts half a brownie in his mouth. Through chocolate crumbs, informs him, “He asked me.”  
  
“I did,” Sebastian confirms, with a _we talked about this, sir_ head-tilt. “I have been learning all sorts of things. Evidently I should be letting you order for me in restaurants. And walking precisely two steps behind you on public streets. And not maintaining eye contact with other Dominants for longer than three seconds, lest I appear to be overly assertive.”  
  
“I hate you so much,” Chris says to Scott, and then, to his husband, “you realize a lot of that shit’s super-traditional, right? No one cares if you walk next to me. And the eye-contact thing’s just stupid.”  
  
“I’ve no idea how I’d manage that one in any case. I have directors and actors and orchestras to talk to.” Sebastian grins. “We could attempt you selecting my food. Sometimes I forget to do that, you recall. And you know what I like.”  
  
“Maybe…if you want…you don’t have to…”  
  
“We do have to, though.” The grin’s mischievous, but serious at the same time. Recognition of necessity coloring the blue. They do have to. Yes. “Scott’s been helping me practice positions, too; would you like a demonstration? I can do better than the basic two, at least, after today.” And then, no warning at all, slides fluidly into a textbook-flawless standing rest pose, hands behind his back, shoulders straight, head ever so slightly bent in submission, exposing his neck.  
  
Chris literally feels his mouth fall open. That same damn feeling. From the first-ever day. Permanent, apparently.  
  
Scott, from the kitchen, applauds and then yells, “Supplicant’s pose! First version!”  
  
Sebastian throws a coruscating grin that way. Turns it on Chris for a blinding second—Chris can’t breathe—and drops to both knees. Bends forward, face-down on the floor, arms calmly outstretched for cuffs or restraints or caresses.  
  
Chris wobbles fractionally on his feet. “You—since when—what—”  
  
Scott, appearing at his side, observes, “Kinda makes me wish I was a Dom. He’s naturally better than I am. So unfair. Not sure we can be friends anymore, Seb.”  
  
Sebastian, from the floor, makes a not at all submissive and very rude gesture in Scott’s direction. Then sits up, and knocks a knee into the closest packing-box while trying to gather legs under him.  
  
Everyone in the room winces. Including the box.  
  
Sebastian regards his offending leg with a sigh. “Sorry, Chris…sorry, books…sorry to you as well, _frate_. I did try to warn you. Hopeless case.”  
  
“What,” Chris says. He’s not—not jealous. Not exactly. It’s just that the heretofore undiscovered tiny monster in his chest is abruptly very lonely.  
  
“Brother in Romanian,” Scott explains. “Extremely cool. And no, you’re not hopeless. Come on, you’ve known this stuff for, what, an hour? I mean, yeah, I know more than you, but you’re better. You care more.”  
  
“Perhaps.” Sebastian, now lying sprawled on his back on his floor, waves a hand at the ceiling and narrowly misses the box a second time. “Perhaps you’ve just not met the right person. Motivation.”  
  
Scott grins. “And you have. Obviously.”  
  
This time both Sebastian and Chris look at him, Sebastian from the floor and Chris from his thunderstruck spot in the living room, from which he’s yet to take another step.  
  
“Come on,” Scott coaxes, shrugging at them, palms up in mild exasperation, “it’s not exactly hard to see, you two’re practically broadcasting it from the rooftops. Precious.”  
  
“Go _away_ ,” Chris says. The monster in his chest whines, unhappy.  
  
Unoffended, Scott picks up another brownie. “You love me. Seb loves me. I’m entirely lovable.”  
  
Sebastian raises a hand. “I only love _you_ in a very platonic manner. Chris, however…”  
  
There’s a short but meaningful silence. Chris doesn’t know what to say. Did Sebastian really just say those words? Were they teasing words, designed to mock Scott? Were they possibly somehow real? Does he dare say the words if Sebastian’s weren’t real?  
  
Sebastian hesitates, looking at his face. Then rolls to his feet, even as Chris belatedly thrusts a hand out to help. And avoids taking said hand. Might be coincidence. “Scott, don’t you have a date?”  
  
“Just friends,” Scott says airily, but his eyes’ve narrowed, scrutinizing Chris. “Coffee. With a friend. That’s important. Being friends. Yeah, y’know, I think I should be going. Enjoy the brownies. And the positions. And the talking you’re about to do.”  
  
Chris, ignored, says, “What talking?”  
  
Sebastian walks Scott to the door, murmuring something too low for Chris to hear; Scott laughs. “Don’t thank me yet. You can still decide to divorce him if he’s a total ass.”  
  
“Oh, hardly a _total_ ass…he’s not played any terrible practical jokes on me as yet…but yes, though, I mean it. Thank you.” They gaze at each other for a moment in the doorway, exchanging unvoiced words Chris can only guess at; Scott shrugs with eyebrows and says, “Good luck,” and punches Sebastian lightly on the shoulder and goes.  
  
Chris, suddenly wrong-footed, feeling like he’s done something clumsy or inept, shifts weight from right to left. Tries the hand again. “You’re beautiful.”  
  
And Sebastian’s expression eases, clouds vanishing from watercolor skies. “You’ve got very odd standards of beauty. I can only hope you enjoy partners who trip over their own feet on a semi-daily basis.”  
  
“I’m an artist.” He keeps his hands out. Both. Inviting. “I have excellent standards of beauty. And, hey, if you let me put lotion on your bruises, I don’t mind.”  
  
“You did say you wanted to touch me.” Sebastian takes both his hands. Sighs. Smiles. “Tell me about your gallery.”  
  
“Open,” Chris says, and reels him in gently, until they’re pressed together, until he can feel the movement when Sebastian breathes. “Interesting. A good blank canvas, the kind you can picture shapes in. I like it.”  
  
“You do. I can hear it.”  
  
“Possibilities…what’d you and my idiot brother talk about? Other than the horrible shit I did to him when we were kids.”  
  
“You do seem to’ve been a troublemaker, sir.” Sebastian’s eyes are laughing. Skies happy again, momentary wistfulness set aside. “You made him take the blame for ruining your wallpaper, that time…we did attempt to pack. We got a bit distracted. And I inquired about positions and expectations. I may invite him over again in a week or two, or after we move—oh, if you don’t mind, only if you don’t mind…I think it’s good for me.”  
  
“Are you sure?” Chris says, which is not the question he’d been planning to ask. He’d never imagined, when he had imagined, asking that question, in that context, of his submissive.  
  
He’s realizing now that he’d always unconsciously assumed his sub, whenever he formally signed a contract, would know the basics. Would _want_ to know the basics.  
  
But Sebastian’s…Sebastian. Lovely, complicated, thoroughly experienced in some very physical areas and not at all in others. His, but his by choice, newly chosen every time, surrender not indoctrinated or learned by rote but deliberate and profound.  
  
He doesn’t want Sebastian to change. Doesn’t want those laughing eyes to reflect anyone other than who they are.  
  
“It is.” Sebastian walks fingertips along Chris’s left bicep. Chris’s body shivers to attention, brimming over with arousal and love and a twinge of bittersweet uncomplaining regret. Scott’s given Sebastian what he, Chris, hasn’t.  
  
Sebastian goes on, pensive but not, Chris thinks, in a bad way, “I doubt I’ll ever be properly trained, despite what your brother believes. I just won’t think of those things—I know they should be second nature, but I won’t remember. But…”  
  
“I don’t care if you—”  
  
“I know. I like talking to Scott, I think.” Pale turquoise eyes regard this admission, and Chris’s face, with self-aware amusement. Weighing the words. “He loves this—what we are. Being wanted, being wooed, being precious, being obedient, being good. He says he’s laughed in bed. He has fun. I’ve felt good, but I never knew it could be fun. Today was, though.”  
  
“With him,” Chris whispers.  
  
“Practicing,” Sebastian whispers back. “For you.”

 

 _Sebastian_  
  
Chris’s eyes get bigger at that. Sebastian wants to laugh, a little. Not precisely a moment for laughter. For closeness, perhaps.  
  
He’s very slightly lied by omission, and he knows it. He’s not saying the words—and the fleeting profanities—that’ve scampered across his mind. He’s not exactly fine.  
  
He said _those_ three words—or as much as said them—and Chris said nothing. That nothingness lurks meaningfully in the air and smothers all the laughter.  
  
The rational part of his brain points out that he didn’t actually say the words _I love you,_ and it’s quite likely Chris was simply confused. His Dominant’s been forthcoming about social anxiety, about not always having the right vocabulary assembled in the right order for a reply. He knows.  
  
He says, “We went through a few basic scenarios,” in case this might help with the wistfulness on both sides. “Hypotheticals. What I’d do if you told me to bring you coffee, or if you ordered food for me that I wasn’t in the mood to have, or if we were at a party and someone asked you whether they could kiss me as a party favor. Scott says you’d say no—I believe you would, don’t look so horrified—but I should let you answer.”  
  
Chris opens his mouth, closes it. Studies him with endearing graveness. “Of course I’d say no.”  
  
“I know. You told me you’d not share me.”  
  
“You believe me.”  
  
“Of course I do.” He frees a hand, pushes up his own left sleeve. It’s sliding down. “You meant it.”  
  
“I mean,” Chris says, hand landing big and heavy over his, “you—”  
  
“Well,” Sebastian says, mostly just for something to say, a syllable, non-empty space, “yes.”  
  
Chris touches the edge of his sleeve. “I like your sweater. If I ordered something for you that you didn’t like…you’d tell me?”  
  
“I’d ask you if I could have something else. You might be making a point. I assume you’re not angry with me in this scenario.”  
  
“I’ll tell you if I’m ever angry with you.” Chris is working fingertips stealthily under his sleeve. Stroking his arm. All the fine hairs shiver in delight. “What point would I be making? ––oh, wait, hang on, I think I know this one. Not sexual, right? About general day to day decisions and control? It’s been a while since I’ve done that for—you would want me to?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Sebastian murmurs. The inside of his elbow’s prickling with sensation. Chris’s fingers keep lightly, almost unconsciously, stroking his skin. “I’ve never tried. If you’d asked me a month ago I’d’ve said no. But…”  
  
“Tell me.”  
  
His sweater’s too hot. Chris did tell him to stay warm, and that was an order, and this is an order as well, and Chris continues touching him, those maddeningly unremarked caresses that toy with the concealed bare skin under his sleeve…  
  
“Ah. You. You could try. It’s about—about recognizing the undercurrents, even if you’re not consciously enforcing…that part of it might work.” He hesitates, but adds the rest anyway. “Sometimes it’s not about sex. I didn’t know that. And Scott says that….that can be nice. Reminders. That I’m yours and I can be—good—in ways that aren’t about our bedroom.”  
  
Peaceful, Scott had said. Blissful. Not unthinking, and you have to remember that you’re in charge really, you’re choosing to give up control, so, y’know, punch him in the face or something if he tries to make you do something demeaning, not that he would, but you know. You can.  
  
Sebastian, listening in mild astonishment, had put down his brownie-half and said: so if I wanted to be on my knees at his feet, not to, ah, do anything, but—unless he wanted me to, I would if—but just to let him touch me, however he wanted…  
  
Scott had grinned: pretty much, yeah. Try making him give you orders. It’s my brother we’re talking about, so you might have to push him, he’s too nice for his own good and he worries too much, but I’m thinking you just might be fine.  
  
“You can,” Chris says. “You are. Good. If I haven’t been saying it outside the bedroom enough, tell me. You _are_ good. For me.”  
  
Sebastian’s knees threaten to buckle.  
  
Chris’s eyebrows go up in surprise. “That worked?”  
  
Sebastian nods, wide-eyed.  
  
“Huh,” Chris says. “Can I try something?”  
  
“ _Da?_ ”  
  
“Perfect.” Chris’s other hand, the one not petting his arm, tucks hair behind his ear. “So I’m not gonna tell you to do anything you don’t want to at least try. Use your colors for this too, yellow, red if you need to, got it? Okay. So, then…go bring me a beer. Not for you, just me.”  
  
Sebastian blinks, feels his lips part, can’t move for a second. That’s…  
  
That’s Chris giving him an order, an actual command. Even the tone of voice is different. Not impatient or arrogant, simply authoritative, with the expectation of being obeyed.  
  
That expectation collides with his next breath, his next heartbeat, and sinks into blood and bone and makes a home there.  
  
Holy fuck, he thinks, standing frozen in his living room with his pulse thumping in his ears. Not because he doesn’t want to obey.  
  
Because he does.  
  
Because he wants to fall to his knees and press a kiss to Chris’s fingertips and weep at the sheer weightlessness, the lifting of so many bricks of invisible tension, the knowledge that Chris _understands_.  
  
He’s distantly aware that he’s a little in shock, physically and emotionally—he’s _never_ hit subspace like this, both of them fully clothed and discussing mundane topics like beer and his sweater choice, but he can’t even start processing the reasons, and doesn’t try. He’s going to need to cry later, coming back down to earth, but the radiance is immediate and splendid.  
  
Chris seems worried, though. Shaking him slightly. Fingers lifting his chin. “Sebastian? Too much? Sorry, fuck, here, I can—I’ll bring you back down if you need that, or is it something else, you said once you were scared of—can you talk? Please?”  
  
“I…think so. Beer, you said…”  
  
“Yeah, but you don’t have to, that was stupid of me, I—”  
  
“I can,” Sebastian tells him, very carefully, “but if I come back and you tell me again that I’m being good, I’m likely going to end up on the floor at your feet. Not in a bad way, mind you.”  
  
Chris stops trying to scrutinize his face for evidence of fear. “Oh. Really? Oh. Um. In that case, I did give you an order. Follow it.” And lifts hands away from his body.  
  
Sebastian gulps in air. Goes.  
  
It’s all one not-too-big room, but at least on the other side of the bar he can pretend Chris isn’t watching. Or maybe he can. Maybe he doesn’t mind. He’s doing what Chris asked, and the order’s a solid anchor amid dizzying rich gold. The air’s too cold and too hot at once over his skin, shoved-up sweater-sleeves and bare feet. The icy bite of the fridge helps, hitting him in the face.  
  
Chris bought the beer, something with a Samuel Adams label but seasonal because Chris likes October and holidays and heartiness. Sebastian’s never been a beer person really. A few unfortunate episodes at university events. If it’s offered. If it goes with the theme of the night. Otherwise, shots, mixed drinks, classic lounge-style cocktails, and sweetness, preferably complicated and berry-flavored and strong.  
  
After a moment of searching, he finds the bottle-opener. Chris hasn’t said anything, behind his back. Eyes on him, steady.  
  
He takes a breath, then another. Then unexpectedly wants to laugh, riding the edge between euphoric giddiness and self-aware amazement. He rather likes the sensation.  
  
He turns. Chris has settled onto the sofa, legs sprawled obscenely wide, bulge evident in his suit-trousers but without any hurry to the arousal. Every inch of him proclaims lazy leonine assurance.  
  
Well. Almost every inch. There’s fondness and concern behind his eyes. Care coloring the summer-blue.  
  
Sebastian ends up smiling, gazing at those eyes.  
  
He walks back over and fits himself between spread legs and slides to his knees the way Chris wants him to. Not as graceful as he ought to be, but he’s proud of himself for keeping the bottle steady.  
  
Chris leans forward. Collects it from his hand. Takes a long sip, swallowing. Sebastian stares at his throat as it moves.  
  
Chris lowers the bottle, looks at him levelly, puts a hand in his hair. The hand’s firm and large, cupping the back of his head. Sebastian trembles. The whole world’s narrowed to that hand and the shine of wetness on Chris’s lips and the glowing molten heat inside his bones. It’s infinite.  
  
“So good,” Chris says, and someone whimpers, a tiny beautiful broken noise, and when he blinks his eyelashes feel damp.  
  
“Shh,” Chris says this time, and pets him, strokes his hair, holds him close, while Sebastian cries a little, face buried in the hook of Chris’s knee. He wants to say he’s fine, he’s fantastic, but he can’t seem to talk. But Chris tells him it’s okay, tells him again, and he believes that because Chris says so. He trusts Chris.  
  
He whispers as much into the silky fabric of Chris’s suit-leg. Chris stops petting him for a second, though the hand stays at the nape of his neck. “What’d you say?”  
  
When he repeats it, not even blushing because he’s beyond that, answering because Chris asked, Chris’s hand tightens for a split second. “God. You—I can’t even—you’re fuckin’ amazing, Sebastian, you know that? I don’t know how to say that so you’ll believe me. I hope I can, someday. I just—you trust me with this, with you, and I know you were scared and—never mind, ’m not gonna make you answer that, too complicated. For now. Right now, just listen, okay? You’re doing so well, and you’re so fuckin’ gorgeous. I want you to stay here for a while, for as long as you want, and tell me if you want to get up, okay?”  
  
Sebastian closes his eyes and leans his head against Chris’s knee. There’re thoughts present, but in the background. Blanketed by silence, peace, thick layers of sunlight around his mind and heart and bones. “Yes, sir.”  
  
“I asked you to use my name more. I’m not mad. Just—say it, please.”  
  
“Yes,” Sebastian breathes, “Chris,” and lets himself fall even further into the glow.  
  
The sun’s fading contentedly lower out beyond the skyline. Streaks of rose and amber and topaz dye the sky in improbable hues, a fairy-tale backdrop to the spires and shapes of the city. The apartment’s not dark, but bathed in dimness, a kind of floating indeterminate twilight. Chris’s hand stays warm in his hair, idly stroking, sometimes still, sometimes petting. Chris’s other hand’s busy sketching, notepad having appeared from nowhere; Sebastian peeks over at one somewhat more lucid point to see the pencil and the motion, though he can’t tell what the shape might be. Chris notices and makes an inquisitive sound, and then adds, “Not sketching you, didn’t know if you wanted—” as if he thinks Sebastian might actually object.  
  
He shakes his head, meaning, you can, it’s okay; and closes his eyes again. Drifting. Anchored.  
  
After a while Chris touches his cheek, and holds out the half-empty beer-bottle. Holds it to his lips, in fact, and Sebastian opens his mouth.  
  
He drinks when Chris lets him, as much as Chris lets him, swallowing slowly poured sips, letting flavors—malt, caramel, nuttiness—wash over his tongue. He could, he thinks vaguely, learn to appreciate beer.  
  
Chris takes the bottle away. Brushes a proprietary thumb over Sebastian’s lips. Takes a sip himself. Goes back to sketching.  
  
The sunset makes companionable room for indigos and blues and neon jewels. The floor’s starting to get sort of hard, despite the presence of the rug. Not badly so.  
  
He comes back more when he figures out that he’s hungry. The grumble becomes increasingly difficult to ignore, and that triggers more awareness that he’s sitting on the floor, and while he and his apartment exist in a state of mutual appreciation most of the time, neither the floor nor his legs’re exactly made for this.  
  
Chris hasn’t said he can get up, but Chris might be hungry as well; Chris isn’t drawing anymore, too dark, but has kept the spare hand resting on his head. Sebastian shivers, caught between options, not resurfacing but just close enough to know he’s not yet entirely rational.  
  
Chris notices. Naturally.  
  
“Hey.” And, oh, that voice. Harbor sunsets and history. Kindness and silversmith stories. Gulls in an New England breeze. Hot toddies and comfort: his husband, holding him close. Sebastian breathes out, tugged back into drifting serenity for a passing moment.  
  
Chris nudges his chin with a finger. “Nope, come on, you moved, and I can tell you’re feeling somethin’, talk to me.”  
  
“Oh…sorry, Chris.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“What?” They gaze at each other in shared perplexity for a few seconds; Chris sighs. “Okay, never mind, not a fair question. How’re you feeling? Color?”  
  
“…hungry?”  
  
“Not a color, but fair enough.” Chris scoots forward so they’re closer together, Sebastian tucked possessively between his legs and still on the ground. “Want me to get us food? Delivery. Chinese.”  
  
“Yes…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Was that,” Sebastian starts, and his voice shakes, abrupt disintegration of calm, “are you—what we said about you ordering for me, I—you can, I want—but it’s too—oh, _rahat_ , sorry—”  
  
Chris slides off the couch and onto the floor with him and flings arms and legs around him. They end up collapsed across the rug next to a stack of unfilled boxes, Chris holding him while the reaction hits at last, delayed and hard.  
  
He tries to apologize once he can talk. Chris snorts indelicately and says, “Don’t even,” and kisses the top of his head. “Too much, you were going to say? Yeah. You seemed a little _too_ okay about it, earlier. I should’ve known.”  
  
“No…I mean, I was…I _am_ okay.” He lifts his head to find Chris’s gaze, through burning tears. They fall like scalding diamonds. Annealing. “Or I think I am. I feel a bit like the girl from the bay-tree, in the fairy-tale…after she realizes she can never go back to her home, and no one recognizes her…”  
  
“I…don’t think I know that one.” Chris’s voice wobbles. Grief? A pleading note, asking for this to be somehow okay? “Can you…translate? Or something?”  
  
“Oh…yes, all right…she comes out of her tree and lets herself be seduced by the handsome prince, willingly but somewhat naïvely. Afterwards she finds the tree shut against her, and the prince gone…”  
  
“I’m not sure I like this story. Are you—did I _hurt_ you—”  
  
“No. I’m not done.” He’s fishing out half-remembered folkloric details as he talks. Strangely, that’s grounding too. Familiar, like the morning after their wedding night. Himself in Chris’s arms, elaborating fairy-tales. “I told you once that Romanian folklore can be fairly dark around the edges. So she goes in search of the prince, but she has to borrow clothing, and she ends up in an enchanted robe offered by a monk…don’t ask me why, I’ve no idea, it’s a fairy-story…no one recognizes her, not even the prince, who at that point is engaged to another woman. I was mostly only thinking that. About not recognizing myself in a reflection. But stronger, in a way. She’s out of her tree and walking through the world and learning everything…”  
  
Chris scrubs a hand over his own eyes. Sebastian leans closer and bumps their noses together. Chris, startled, moves the hand. Sebastian kisses him.  
  
“It has a happy ending, this one. Disguised as the monk, she starts talking to the prince, who as it happens has begun feeling guilty—he was promised to this other girl at birth, you see, which was why he left, the feeling guilty—and he begins to feel real remorse as she tells him the story.”  
  
“Good!”  
  
“Stop interrupting if you want me to tell it properly, sir. He talks to her about it every day for weeks, while she’s disguised as the monk; he confesses his sins and asks forgiveness, and she sees him as the man he’s becoming and falls in love with him in turn, and—well, in fact the heroine attempts to hang herself at that point because she’s somewhat melodramatic, I’d change that part if I could—anyway he decides he’s in love with the monk and arrives in time to save her, and the other girl turns out to have been lying about her identity, and the girl he was meant to end up with was the girl who’d been hidden in the tree, all along.”  
  
Chris blinks.  
  
“It’s a bit complicated.”  
  
“Yeah, but no, I got it. You feel like you gave yourself to me, and you ended up—different.” Chris skims a thumb over his cheekbone, and the gesture’s so full of heartbreak that Sebastian’s soul aches in sympathy. “And you can’t go back.”  
  
“Yes and no,” Sebastian says, lying on his floor with Chris’s leg thrown over his hips, with Chris’s heartbeat under his hand. “She doesn’t want to go back. She’s more free outside her tree than she’s ever been before. Because of him.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“They both learn.” He puts an arm around Chris’s waist. His stomach, inappropriately, growls. His cock, of its own volition, is half-hard, lingering indistinct arousal from before and the heat of Chris’s body aligned with his now. So many needs, and he’s purely content nevertheless, here in Chris’s arms. Shaken and kind of chilly with the departing emotions and endorphins, but that’s part of the contentment too. Inseparable and draining and welcome. “They both end up stronger, and better for it. They earn their happy ending.”  
  
“Still kind of horrible,” Chris mutters, but his muscles’ve relaxed. “You don’t know how relieved I am that you said you’d change that one part, by the way. You know.”  
  
“I know.” He kisses Chris once more. “I know. And I wouldn’t go back, either.”  
  
“No enchanted trees you want to hide in?” This time Chris kisses him back, assertive and Dominant but playful about it, not insistent, purely sweet. “I’d come with you if you’d let me. Or let you go if you wanted. I’d miss you, it’d kill me, but I would.” Heartfelt, every letter. Audible.  
  
“No Chinese food in enchanted trees,” Sebastian tells him. “Can I have sweet and sour chicken? And possibly extra egg rolls?”  
  
The phrasing’s one hundred percent purposeful. He watches Chris get it. Watches the grin appear, incandescent.  
  
“Yeah,” Chris says, “yes, okay, that’s me saying you can. Do you want wontons too, because if so we might have to have a discussion about whether brownies were an acceptable lunch.”  
  
“They’re not?”  
  
“No, they’re not!” But Chris is laughing behind the imposition of discipline. “I forgot to ask you whether you ate anything with actual protein, but I don’t have to, do I. So, um, I’ll spank you for that later. Can I show you something?”  
  
“Of course!”  
  
Chris sits up enough to make a lunge for the table and his notepad. “I said I wasn’t sketching you. I don’t know how you’d feel about that—you, like that, on paper, y’know? But here. It’s for you anyway.”  
  
He stares at the notepad. No words. No sounds in his throat, on his tongue.  
  
“I kind of did it fast,” Chris dismisses, “and the light wasn’t—and I know I didn’t get everything—”  
  
“Oh my God,” Sebastian says, and wants to put his free hand over his mouth except it’s touching Chris’s chest.  
  
Chris drew the room. The apartment. His apartment. The apartment they’ll be moving out of in just under three weeks.  
  
Hurried pencil on a notepad page. Light and dark streaks of grey and black and creamy backdrop. Legions of books in cheerful rows on their shelves. The television. The picture window and the twinkling city beyond. Boxes imaginatively banished, no interruptions allowed. And a sandwich and an apple and a mug of whipped-cream-topped coffee wafting inviting steam, perched on the table beside a page of half-written music.  
  
Chris put his home on paper and gave it to him.  
  
“Oh my God,” Sebastian says again, completely out of responses. Too many emotions. They tangle up together and leave only blankness.  
  
“Hey,” Chris pleads, eyes apprehensive now, “I know it’s not great, I know, can you look at me, I’ll make it an order if you want—”  
  
“ _Incredibil,_ ” Sebastian whispers, then, louder, “you’re incredible. Chris…I…don’t know what to say. Thank you. _Multumesc mult,_ thank you.” Not only for the sketch. For so much more.  
  
Chris blushes impressively pink, and says, “Sit up, come here, let me keep you warm, I’m gonna wrap you in blankets and then order your egg rolls,” and keeps blushing throughout the overly busy process of getting him off the floor and onto the sofa and mummified in excessive wool-cashmere blend. Sebastian unearths a hand and catches his husband’s fingers; Chris stops on the way to grab his phone, arrested mid-step.  
  
“Thank you,” Sebastian tells him again. He means _I love you_. He’s thinking _I love you._ He thinks he will say it, soon. Not tonight, not in the aftermath of too many shimmering emotions. English’s currently being tricky—all languages are, his vocabulary having been decimated by surrender and afterglow and kindness—and he’s tired, and Chris might not believe him if he says it now. Chris might not say it back; that's a possibility, a very distinct one given how close they'd come this afternoon.  
  
But he means it. Chris is a good man, a man worth loving, and Chris won't leave him if he says the words. Chris will be kind, and Sebastian won't keep this secret; Chris deserves to know where they both stand.

And he’s more sure than ever that he _wants_ to say it. Soon.  
  
“Yeah, well,” Chris says, fidgeting a little, not looking away, meeting his eyes, apparently forgetting where that sentence’d been meant to go.  
  
Sebastian, holding his husband’s hand, brings it to his lips. Kisses the tanned back of it, a promise over tendon and strength and flushed skin. Looks up.  
  
Chris turns the hand and touches his index finger to Sebastian’s mouth, feather-light. A kiss in reply.  
  
“Still thinkin’ I might want to spank you after dinner,” Chris muses, somehow not shattering the moment at all, only extending it like liquid glass. Possibilities flowing outward into time. Coming together.  
  
Sebastian, knowing his heart’s right there in his eyes, feeling Chris’s finger over his lips, nods.


End file.
